Word: biologist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...runoff no longer met legal standards. Locals knew vaguely that wastewater had some environmental pluses. Humboldt Bay oysters fed on its nutrients, and Professor Allen, a likable tinkerer whom Klippity Klopp calls Crazy George, raised salmon fingerlings in a mix of sea and wastewater. Other ideas emerged. HSU biologist Stan Harris was for a bird sanctuary. Gearheart came in as an expert on oxidation ponds...
...obscure corner of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), molecular biologist Norton Zinder strode to a 30-ft.-long oval conference table, sat down and rapped his gavel for order. A hush settled over the Human Genome Advisory Committee, an unlikely assemblage of computer experts, biologists, ethicists, industry scientists and engineers. "Today we begin," chairman Zinder declared. "We are initiating an unending study of human biology. Whatever it's going to be, it will be an adventure, a priceless endeavor. And when it's done, someone else will sit down and say, 'It's time to begin...
Although scientists share many of these concerns, the concept of deciphering the human genome sends most of them into paroxysms of rapture. "It's the Holy Grail of biology," says Harvard biologist and Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert. "This information will usher in the Golden Age of molecular medicine," says Mark Pearson, Du Pont's director of molecular biology. Predicts George Cahill, a vice president at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute: "It's going to tell us everything. Evolution, disease, everything will be based on what's in that magnificent tape called...
...staggering expense and sheer size of the genome project were what bothered scientists most when the idea was first broached in 1985 by Sinsheimer, then chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "I thought Bob Sinsheimer was crazy," recalls Leroy Hood, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology. "It seemed to me to be a very big science project with marginal value to the science community...
...solution is automation. "It will improve accuracy," says Stanford's Paul Berg. "It will remove boredom; it will accomplish what we want in the end." The drive for automation has already begun; a machine designed by Caltech biologist Leroy Hood can now sequence 16,000 base pairs a day. But Hood, a member of the Genome Advisory Committee, is hardly satisfied. "Before we can seriously take on the genome initiative," he says, "we will want to do 100,000 to a million a day." The cost, he hopes, will eventually drop to a penny per base pair...